1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to trans-lingual search and retrieval of search results. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for dynamically displaying linguistic annotation on trans-lingual search results in callouts or virtual bubbles.
2. Description of Prior Art
The World Wide Web is a fast expanding terrain of information available via the Internet. The sheer volume of documents available on different sites on the World Wide Web (“Web”) warrants that there are efficient search tools for quick search and retrieval of relevant information. In this context, search engines assume great significance because of their utility as search tools that help the users to search and retrieve specific information from the Web by using keywords, phrases or queries.
A whole array of search tools is available these days for users to choose from in conducting their search. However, search tools are not all the same. They differ from one another primarily in the manner they index information or web sites in their respective databases using a particular algorithm peculiar to that search tool. It is important to know the difference between the various search tools because while each search tool does perform the common task of searching and retrieving information, each one accomplishes the task differently. Hence, the difference in search results from different search engines even though the same phrases/queries are inputted.
Search tools of different kinds fall broadly into five categories, i.e. directories, search engines, super engines; meta search engines; and special search engines.
Search tools like Yahoo, Magellan and Look Smart qualify as web directories. Each of these web directories has developed its own database comprising of selected web sites. Thus, when a user uses a directory like Yahoo to perform a search, he is searching the database maintained by Yahoo and browsing its contents.
Search engines like Infoseek, WebCrawler and Lycos use software programs such as “Web crawlers”, “spiders” or “robots” that crawl around the Web and index, and catalogue the contents from different web sites into the database of the search engine itself. Web crawler programs are a subset of software agents programs with an unusual degree of autonomy which perform tasks for the user. These agents normally start with a historical list of links, such as server lists, and lists of the most popular or best sites, and follow the links on these pages to find more links to add to the database.
A more sophisticated class of search engines includes super engines, which use a similar kind of software as “Web crawlers”, “robots” or “spiders.” However, they are different from ordinary search engines because they index keywords appearing not only on the title but anywhere in the text of site content. Excite, OpenText, Hot Bot and Alta Vista are examples of super engines.
A meta search engine is a search engine that queries other search engines and then combines the results that are received from all. A user using a meta search engine actually browses through a whole set of search engines contained in the database of the meta search engine. Dogpile and Savvy Search are examples of meta search engines.
Special search engines are another type of search engines that cater to the needs of users seeking information on particular subject areas. Deja News and Infospace are examples of special search engines.
Thus, each one of these search tools is unique in terms of the way it performs a search and works towards fulfilling the common goal of making resources on the web available to users. Most search engines allow users to type in a few words, and then search for occurrences of these words in their database. Each one has a special way of deciding what to do about approximate spellings, plural variations, and truncation.
However, most of these search engines are limited in their scope in so far as most of these search engines cater to the needs of the English speaking community alone and help in the search and retrieval of monolingual documents only. Most of these search engines require input in English and search web sites that have information available in English only. In other words, most of the search tools cater primarily to the needs of the English speaking Internet users. This attribute renders these search tools almost useless to the non-English speaking Internet users who constitute as much as 75% of the Internet user population. This non-English speaking user community is unable to search English web sites since it cannot adequately input phrases or queries in English. Consequently, this large community of users is unable to benefit from the search tools and web documents available in English. This is a serious drawback, which has not been addressed by any of the existing search engines.
Likewise, the non-English speaking Internet users also create web sites to store information in non-English languages. This rich source of information is not available to query by English oriented search engines. As a result the English speaking population remains deprived of the resources available in the other languages of the world for the same reasons as discussed above.
As an example, when preparing a Chinese To-fu dish which calls for “shrimp caviare,” a search was made on a super engine, such as altavista.com to check the availability of “shrimp caviare” anywhere in the world. A search using altavista.com under “all language” revealed no matching results under either “English” or “Chinese” setting. A search was then made for the English term “shrimp caviare” at china.com, which is a Chinese search engine, but to no avail. Subsequently, the term “shrimp caviare” was looked up in Chinese to find its Chinese equivalent. The Chinese equivalent thus found was “xiazi” (meaning, “shrimp roe”). This word was then used for making the search on china.com and yielded as many as twenty-four hits.
Ning-Ping Chan et al have been granted on Aug. 5, 2003 a US patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,604,101) for their invention entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TRANSLINGUAL TRANSLATION OF QUERY AND SEARCH AND RETRIAL OF MULTILINGUAL INFORMATION ON A COMPUTER NETWORK”. The patent discloses and teaches a method for translating a query input by the user in a source language (also called the user's language or the subject language) into a target language (also called the object language) and searching and retrieving web documents in the target language and translating the web documents into the source language. According to this invention, the user first inputs a query in a source language through a unit such as the keyboard. This query is then processed by the server at the backend to extract content word from the input query. The next step takes place at the dialectal controller, which is present on the server and performs the function of dialectally standardizing the content word or words so extracted. During this process the user may be prompted for some more so as to refine the search by the user or in case dialectal standardization could not be performed using the initial input query. This is followed by the process of pre-search translation, which comprises of translating the dialectally standardized word into a target language through a translator. This process of translation is followed by inputting the translated word into a search engine in the target language. Such an input yields search results in the target language corresponding to the translated word. The results so obtained are then displayed in the form of site names (URL) which satisfy the search criteria. All the results thus obtained in the target language are then displayed on the user screen.
According to the user's needs such results may then be translated back either in whole or in part into the source language. Chan's patent aims at assisting a user to search the web by entering a query in the user's own language, called source language, and returning to the user an entire translation of a targeted web site. In many circumstances, for a user who has some basic knowledge about the target language, the translation of an entire document is not necessary. Instead, an instant bilingual annotation on some key words, phrases or sentences would be good enough.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system and method which enables a user enters a search entry in a language other than the principal language used in the document to be searched and automatically highlights each matching phrase or matching object in the search result with a callout or bubble which contains an artificial intelligence based bilingual annotation on the matching phrase or matching object.
It would be further desirable to provide a system and method which enables a remote user enters a search entry in a language other than the principal language used in a web site to be searched and automatically highlights each matching phrase or matching object in the search result with a callout or bubble which contains an artificial intelligence based bilingual annotation on the matching phrase or matching object.
It would be further desirable to provide a system and method which enables a remote user enters a search entry in a language other than the principal language used in a web search engine and automatically highlights each matching phrase or matching object in the returned search results with a callout or bubble which contains an artificial intelligence based bilingual annotation on the matching phrase or matching object.